Other News

HONOLULU – Another piece of confirmed tsunami debris – part of a restaurant sign – has washed ashore in Alaska. But marine scientists can’t say how much other Japanese disaster debris is trailing behind. This problem surfaced at a U.S. Senate hearing Thursday. Researchers are now getting some access to spy satellite imagery.

Last year’s enormous tsunami washed millions of tons of debris out to sea from Japan. Within the following month, the debris field dispersed so much that it could no longer be tracked by conventional satellites. In recent weeks though, requests to the Defense Department have yielded spy satellite imagery with a resolution down to one meter. Carey Morishige with NOAA’s Marine Debris Program says that’s created a new challenge: the ocean is vast.

HONOLULU - One quarter (12 of 39) of U.S.-operated tsunami warning buoys in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans are out of service. That includes the two tsunami detection buoys directly off the Pacific Northwest coast. But the warning system has some redundancy built in.

Normally, there’s a tsunami detection buoy anchored more than 200 miles off the mouth of the Columbia River and another roughly that far offshore of Coos Bay, Oregon. But both buoys broke from their moorings this winter and spring, probably because of storms. The earliest they’ll be replaced is September. So does that leave us vulnerable in the meantime?

SALINAS, Calif. — A California lettuce grower has expanded a recall of some bagged salads after routine sampling detected listeria contamination. No illnesses have been reported.

With the spring rains descending upon us, ushering in the "June Gloom" a little early, Crosscut.com's Knute Berger has come up with eight simple rules to preserve your sanity while living in Seattle.

With all the totem poles in Washington State, it might surprise you to know the cedar monument isn’t from this region.

Though some local tribes now carve them, they didn’t originally.

In fact, the first one here was pilfered from another state.

Read More on I Wonder Why ... ?

A Seattle couple who lived in a $1.2 million waterfront home while collecting tens of thousands of dollars in welfare has pleaded guilty to theft of government funds.

The U.S. Attorney General's office in Seattle says 60-year-old David Silverstein and 53-year-old Lyudmila Shimonova pleaded guilty Thursday and will pay more than $330,000 in restitution plus $216,441 in a separate civil penalty.

Starting in 2003, prosecutors say the couple defrauded the Department of Housing and Urban Development by asking for rent assistance. In their scheme, Silverstein posed as Shiminova's landlord and received $1,250 a month. Separately, Shiminova sought assistance from state and federal welfare programs, receiving nearly $145,000.

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Washington’s jobless rate continues to inch downward. The April numbers out Wednesday put unemployment at 8.1 percent . That’s down from 8.3 percent in March. Most of April’s job growth was in manufacturing.

State economist Dave Wallace says so far 2012 is proving to be a recovery year in Washington.

“We now have eight sectors that are on the positive side of the ledger, three sectors on the negative side," Wallace says. "Overall the private sector on the annual basis has grown by 1.9 percent and added 43,900 jobs.”

The city of Seattle, King County and investor Chris Hansen have reached an agreement in the effort to build an arena that could bring professional basketball back to the Puget Sound.

The memorandum of understanding announced Wednesday now goes before the City Council and King County Council for approval.

The agreement adds a new wrinkle to an original proposal in that an NHL team is no longer needed to start construction. Only an NBA team, with a non-relocation agreement signed, is needed to begin construction on the proposed 18,500-seat facility.

It's only for women — and only for one woman at a time, it seems.

But officials in Ichihara City, Japan, claim they've created the "biggest public toilet in the world."

As The Japan Times reports, outside the city's train station there's now a fenced-in, "200-sq.-meter plot of land" with flowers, plants, pathways and — "smack in the middle" — a toilet enclosed in a glass box.

"I was so distracted by all the happy people and color," says runner Sofia Jaramillo. "It didn't even feel like a run just an all around good time."

Thousands of excited runners and walkers gathered as a plain white canvas at the Seattle Center Sunday morning awaiting to enter a sea of color.

The first wave of 1,000 participants took off at approximately 8:30am followed by five more waves every five minutes for Seattle’s first Color Run.